Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials

If you have an idea for a game but lack the skills to create it, this book is the perfect introduction. There’s lots of handholding through all the essentials, culminating in the building of a full 3D game.

Unity 3.x Game Development Essentials

Starting

Will GoldstoneDecember 2011

2 customer reviews

If you have an idea for a game but lack the skills to create it, this book is the perfect introduction. There’s lots of handholding through all the essentials, culminating in the building of a full 3D game.

Book Details

ISBN 139781849691444

Paperback488 pages

Book Description

Game Engines such as Unity are the power-tools behind the games we know and love. Unity is one of the most widely-used and best loved packages for game development and is used by everyone, from hobbyists to large studios, to create games and interactive experiences for the web, desktop, mobile, and console. With Unity’s intuitive, easy to learn toolset and this book – it’s never been easier to become a game developer.

Taking a practical approach, this book will introduce you to the concepts of developing 3D games, before getting to grips with development in Unity itself – prototyping a simple scenario, and then creating a larger game. From creating 3D worlds to scripting and creating game mechanics you will learn everything you’ll need to get started with game development.

This book is designed to cover a set of easy-to-follow examples, which culminate in the production of a First Person 3D game, complete with an interactive island environment. All of the concepts taught in this book are applicable to other types of game, however, by introducing common concepts of game and 3D production, you'll explore Unity to make a character interact with the game world, and build puzzles for the player to solve, in order to complete the game. At the end of the book, you will have a fully working 3D game and all the skills required to extend the game further, giving your end-user, the player, the best experience possible. Soon you will be creating your own 3D games with ease!

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Enter the Third Dimension

Getting to grips with 3D

Rigidbody physics

Essential Unity concepts

The interface

Summary

Chapter 2: Prototyping and Scripting Basics

Your first Unity project

A basic prototyping environment

Introducing scripting

Understanding Translate

Testing the game so far

Storing with prefabs

Using Instantiate() to spawn objects

Summary

Chapter 3: Creating the Environment

Designing the game

Using the terrain editor

Summary

Chapter 4: Player Characters and Further Scripting

Working with the Inspector

Anatomy of a character

Deconstructing the First Person Controller object

Further scripting

Full example

Inter-script communication and Dot Syntax

Scripting for character movement

Summary

Chapter 5: Interactions

External modeling applications

Setting up the outpost model

Adding the outpost

Collisions and triggers

Ray casting

Opening the outpost

Summary

Chapter 6: Collection, Inventory, and HUD

Creating the power cell prefab

Scattering power cells

Writing the Player Inventory

Restricting outpost access

Displaying the power cell HUD

Hints for the player

Summary

Chapter 7: Instantiation and Rigidbodies

Utilizing instantiation

Rigidbodies

Making the mini-game

Summary

Chapter 8: Particle Systems

What is a particle system?

Creating the task

Testing and confirming

Summary

Chapter 9: Designing Menus

Interfaces and menus

Creating the menu with GUITextures and mouse events

Creating the menu with the Unity GUI class and GUI skins

Summary

Chapter 10: Animation Basics

Game win sequence

Summary

Chapter 11: Performance Tweaks and Finishing Touches

Terrain tweaks and player position

Positioning the player

Optimizing performance

Finishing touches

Chapter 12: Building and Sharing

Build options

Build Settings

Player Settings

Quality Settings

Player Input settings

Building the game

Sharing your work

Summary

Chapter 13: Testing and Further Study

Learn by doing

Testing and finalizing

Approaches to learning

Summary

What You Will Learn

An understanding of the Unity 3D Engine and game development

Write code for game development in either C# or JavaScript

Build a 3D island and set of mini-games for your players

Incorporate terrains and externally produced 3D models to get your game environment up and running

Create a stylish and efficient menu, and animate other interface elements

Use Lightmapping to make your game environments look more professional

Deploy your game to the web and desktop and share it with the wider world for testing and feedback.

Authors

Will Goldstone

Will Goldstone is a longstanding member of the Unity community and works for Unity Technologies as a Technical Support Associate, handling educational content and developer support. With an MA in Creative Education, and many years experience as a lecturer in higher education, Will wrote the first ever Unity book, the original Unity Game Development Essentials, and also created the first ever video tutorials for the package. Through his sites http://www.unity3dstudent.com and http://learnunity3d.com Will helps to introduce new users to the growing community of developers discovering Unity every day.

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